Kurt Toppel, the current Pacific Palisades Community Council vice chairman, will replace Norman Kulla as chairman beginning July 1. Other executive board members will include attorneys Steve Boyers and Rob Weber, serving as vice chairman and secretary, and Ted Mackie, owner of Palisades Bicycles, as treasurer. ‘No one ever worked more effectively, more devotedly and quietly on behalf of this community than Kurt,’ Kulla wrote in the latest PPCC newsletter. Toppel, a Palisadian since 1958, was named Citizen of the Year in 1998 for guiding the community’s long campaign for a new gym at the Palisades Recreation Center. He also won a earlier Golden Sparkplug Award for spearheading the project. ‘I am sort of retired and devote most of my ‘free’ time to community affairs,’ said Toppel, who currently is president of the Marquez Knolls Property Owners Association and a member of PRIDE. He intends to resign as president but remain a member of the homeowners’ organization when he becomes chairman of the council. Toppel formerly ran his own international business consulting firm, helping American companies establish themselves in Europe, and vice versa. Born in Cologne, Germany, Toppel earned the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in economics and law from Wuerzburg University before moving to the United States and earning his master’s degree in economics from Cal State. ‘I arrived in Los Angeles in 1956,’ said Toppel, who served in the U.S. Army. When he started his career in the States, Toppel faced ‘the challenge of being one of the very first computer programmers at General Telephone’ and he jokes about ‘the brief time it took to develop ulcers as a project manager at TRW Systems.’ Toppel was in charge of business development at Computer Sciences, and eventually started his own international business consulting firm using language skills and the contacts he had built over the years. Toppel’s creative enthusiasm for neighborhood involvement is contagious. He said that his wife, Haldis, ‘is getting steadily more involved in community affairs, and takes care of my e-mail.’ Their son Curt, 24, is a graduate of Stanford University currently playing professional volleyball in Italy. Another longtime Palisadian and Golden Sparkplug winner, Ted Mackie, has previously served the Community Council as treasurer and as an environmental representative (co-representing the permanent seat held by Temescal Canyon Association). He also created the council’s Web site (www.pp90272.com), which he designed from scratch. Mackie has lived here since 1946, and worked at Douglas Aircraft for 20 years before purchasing his small bike shop on Via de la Paz in the early 1970s. He is a leading age-group runner and leads TCA hikes with his wife, Carol Leacock. Robert Weber, an attorney with DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary in Century City, will replace his wife, Karyn, in the position of secretary, which requires taking arduous minutes at meetings that sometimes last more than two hours. ‘I decided to get involved when [past chairman] George Wolfberg asked me,’ said Weber, adding that it was getting closer to the time when Karyn was going on maternity leave and wouldn’t be able to attend meetings. ‘I think that’s it’s important to know what’s going on in the community and being involved is a wonderful thing to do to effect positive change in the community.’ Weber also leads the land subcommittee of the Potrero Citizens Advisory Committee, which he said was formed as a ‘result of Community Council actions spurring Councilperson Cindy Miscikowski to bring a motion in front of the full City Council that is going to help us get this project done.’ The Webers, who have two young children, had their first experience with the Community Council when they moved to the Palisades in early 2002. ‘We were getting woken up every morning at 4 a.m. by street cleaning in the park, which is right behind our house,’ Weber explained. After calling the City to report their problem, they turned to Wolfberg, who ‘made a call or two and that resolved the issue. ‘We saw early on that the council can make things happen that benefits people in the community; it had a pretty significant effect on our enjoyment living here.’ Weber has also become active in PAPA, the parade organizing committee. Steve Boyers, the new vice chairman, was out of town and unable to be reached before we went to press on Wednesday.
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